


Making a Home

by wrecked_anon



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Animal Transformation, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Lokitty, M/M, Multi, OT3, froz3npizza
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 09:19:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2687447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrecked_anon/pseuds/wrecked_anon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a large black housecat shows up at the Potts-Stark residence with no identification and no owner to be found, Tony and Pepper find themselves taking on more than they bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unexpected Company

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FelicityGS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS/gifts).



"Tony, can you get up here?" Pepper's uneasy voice floated down into the workshop. "I think you need to see this."

Blowtorch in hand, Tony paused just long enough to call back up, "Uh, Pep, kind of mid-weld down here; could you take care of it?"

"I-uh, I'm not sure."

"What do you mean, you're not sure?"

"There's a giant black cat out on the balcony and it's behaving really strangely. I think it might have rabies."

Tony went through the list of his Malibu neighbors, trying to remember if any of them had mentioned a missing cat. Concentration shot, he peeled off his goggles, turned off the torch, and headed upstairs to find Pepper in the living room, eyes fixed on the sliding doors leading out to the balcony. "Alright what's the deal?"

Pepper pointed out onto the balcony, where sure enough, the largest housecat Tony had ever seen was pacing restlessly back and forth in front of the door, pausing occasionally to get on its hind legs and paw at the latch. It was pure black from nose to tail. "I don't know where it came from; I was going through my agenda for next week, and when I looked up it was just _there_ , and It's been doing _that_ since I started watching it."

"Weird. How did it even get on the balcony? The only way out there is from inside the house." Tony stepped up to the glass door, arms crossed. The cat stopped pacing and sat, looking up at him with unblinking green eyes. "Do you think I should let it in?"

Pepper got up from the couch to stand next to Tony, surveying the cat with one eyebrow raised. It pawed at the glass, wanting in. Not getting the results it was clearly hoping for, it rolled over and began rubbing its back into the concrete, belly exposed, pausing every few seconds to watch the humans hopefully.

"Well I guess it probably doesn't have rabies. It was just staring at me so intently it was freaking me out." 

Tony hummed in agreement. "Clearly it's someone's cat, right? I didn't think stray cats were this manipulative."

"Yeah, someone's got to be looking for it. Let's let it in and call around." 

The cat ceased its display the moment Tony's hand went for the latch and stood in front of the door, waiting. Tony slid it open and the cat stepped primly over the threshold, regarding him and Pepper warily. Pepper crouched and extended a hand in amnesty. The cat sniffed it carefully and proceeded to rub against the length of her arm, purring audibly.

"Who loses a perfectly good cat?" Tony muttered. "JARVIS, can you start calling the neighbors and figure out whose cat this is?"

"As you wish, sir. How far would you like me to inquire?"

"I have no idea. How far does your typical cat get from home?" Tony watched the cat explore the room, nosing beneath the couch and crawling into every available space between the furniture.

"Rarely more than a kilometer, sir."

"Well then let's start there. While you're at it, can you search Craigslist for lost cat ads and post a found ad for this guy?"

The cat in question began to make itself comfortable on the couch.

"Of course, sir. My scanners have confirmed that the cat is indeed male, and in good health, though I would recommend having him examined by a veterinarian before too long. I've also placed an order for cat food to be delivered within the hour. "

"Duly noted, JARV. Pep, I've got some work to finish up before I can call it a day. You two going to be alright up here?"

Pepper smiled. "I've got to finish up a couple of emails, but if he stays on the couch like that we should be fine."

"Great. I'll be up in a couple of hours."

Relieved at not having to call animal control, Tony disappeared back down the stairs into his workshop. He briefly considered resuming the welding project he was working on before the cat appeared, but his eye caught on the package that Natasha had delivered last week. _It's from Strange_ , she'd said. _Fury wants you to take a look at it. Said that Strange thought it was some kind of magical battery, but that the outer casing was magic resistant and needed to be opened by mechanical means._ He'd been so wrapped up in the latest suit upgrade that he'd forgotten all about it.

"JARV, start a new project file for me. Let's call it Energizer Bunny." He tore off the plain brown wrapping to reveal a golden sphere, about six inches in diameter and utterly devoid of any markings. "This is going to be fun."

____

"So what are we going to call him?" Pepper asked over dinner later that night.

Three hours and a whole battery of tests had revealed nothing about Strange's magic Duracell and Tony was frustrated. "Better not get too attached, Pep. There's no way he's not somebody's."

"Well he's good company. Stayed curled up with me the whole time I was working. Maybe after we find his home we should think about getting a cat of our own."

Tony chewed his ravioli and gestured with his fork. "Yeah that'd be fine with me. No kittens though; I don't want to get woken up at 3am with its little claws in my face."

"Not to interrupt your dinner sir," JARVIS started. "But I have an update on our visitor that is pertinent to this conversation."

"Sure, JARV," Tony replied.

"My canvass of the neighborhood has turned up rather fruitless. In addition to contacting each household, I have checked the Los Angeles County pet license records and found nothing for a cat matching his description within three miles of the mansion. It is unlikely that our visitor is a local."

"Weird. No hits on the found ad either?"

"No sir. I also scanned the animal for a microchip and found nothing. He may in fact be unclaimed, however there have been instances of cats traveling long distances to be reunited with owners. I would advise waiting at least a week before you and Miss Potts make any kind of decision. In the meantime, I will certainly alert you if there are any updates."

"Thanks, JARV." He felt the cat twine around his legs and looked down. Twin green eyes were staring up at him, intentions clear. "Pep, did the food get delivered? Because Cat here is looking at me like he's about to eat me if I don't feed him something."

Pepper looked annoyed. "First of all, didn't you just get done telling me not to get too attached? And now you're naming the cat Cat? And second of all, yes. I put it in a dish in the kitchen two hours ago and he hasn't touched it since."

"Great, you're one of those picky cats, aren't you?"

Cat pawed at his leg.

"Tony please don't feed the cat ravioli. He's not even ours."

"Aw, but you _like_ ravioli, don't you, Cat?"

____

A week went by surprisingly quickly. What was even more surprising was how quickly "Cat" became part of the Potts-Stark household. After the third day, Pepper took him to a local vet to get a clean bill of health, and by the fifth day the living room had an embarrassing number of cat toys littered across the floor.

Tony came up from his workshop after another frustrating afternoon of trying to open the sphere to find Pepper curled up on the couch, watching last night's How to Get Away With Murder. Cat was curled on her lap, eyes on the television.

"Well don't you two look cozy." Tony slid onto the couch next to her, careful not to disrupt her furry lapwarmer. He scratched under Cat's chin, a particular favorite as he'd learned in the past few days. To his surprise, rather than closing his eyes and leaning into Tony's fingers, Cat was very carefully maintaining at least one eye on the show.

"Pepper, Pepper look at Cat. Am I imagining things? I feel like he's watching TV."

Not looking away, Pepper smiled wryly. "Can't blame him, honestly. Viola Davis is pretty hard to take your eyes off of."

"No Pepper, _really_. Look." But as soon as she looked down, Cat closed his eyes in bliss and rolled onto his side, showing them both his fuzzy belly as enthusiastically as possible.

Pepper gave him a _look_."Tony, don't you think you might be spending too much time in the lab lately? You've been down there all week and now you're trying to tell me that our cat is a fan of primetime drama."

"Shit, you're right, it has been a week already." Tony looked down at Cat. "JARV, still nothing on our furry roommate, here?"

"No sir. I have extended my search to several states. There were a few cats matching his description, but there was no visual match with any of the pictures posted. I followed up on other leads to be 100% sure. With a week already elapsed, I estimate that there is only a 3.2% chance that an owner would turn up to claim him, sir. By the two week mark that estimate decreases to 0.5%."

"Well I like those odds." Tony hummed contentedly and pressed a kiss to Pepper's jawbone. "Looks like we have ourselves a cat."  
____

Two weeks later, when Pepper had to go back to New York for the Stark Industries shareholders' meeting, Cat was noticeably restless. He drifted from room to room, mewling at the door of Tony's lab until Tony would come out to pet him and feed him ravioli and chicken pieces from a secret stash he kept in the lab's mini fridge. "Sorry, bud. Too many things for you to get in trouble with behind that door. How about I put the TV on for you again?"

As if on cue, Cat dashed back upstairs and lay on the ottoman in front of the TV. Tony shook his head, followed the cat upstairs, and queued up a few shows on Hulu that he knew Pepper liked. When he returned several hours later, he was sure that the queue should have run out, but instead Cat was happily sprawled in front of Season 1 of Scandal. Tony told himself that probably Hulu had just auto-played it after the newest How to Get Away With Murder.

But strange things kept happening, and Tony was starting to wonder if there wasn't more to his adopted cat than he'd previously suspected.

The second night Pepper was gone, Cat, who typically slept curled between or on top of her and Tony, woke Tony with a wail, hissing and spitting as he dashed from the room.  
"What the absolute fuck? JARVIS, lights please."

"Sir, I don't mean to alarm you, but it appears that our feline resident just experienced a nightmare."

"I'm sorry, what? Is that a thing?"

"Yes, according to veterinary experts, cats are capable of dreaming and thus theoretically capable of having traumatic dreams, though unsurprisingly, in-depth research on this topic is somewhat lacking."

"So where's Cat?"

"Ah, the living room, I believe, sir. He appears to be trying to escape to the balcony."  
"Huh." Tony slid out of bed and walked quietly down the hallway to the living room. As predicted, Cat was at the door, scratching at the glass repeatedly. His fur was standing on end and his usually smooth tail was puffed out to three times its normal size.

"Hey there kitty," Tony crouched a few feet away and called out into the darkness, but it didn't interrupt the tap-tap-tap of nails on glass. "A little help here, JARV. Not sure how to handle a post-traumatic stressed cat."

"It is inadvisable to try to pet him at this time. A consensus on several popular cat websites recommends reacquainting dreaming or startled cats via smell, by holding out one hand or an object with your scent on it."

"Well what's the worst that can happen?" Tony stripped off his tank top and held it out to Cat. "Hey bud, you can relax, okay? I don't know where you were before you got here, but you're home now. Pep and I, we've got you."

As if he'd understood, Cat stopped scratching at the glass and turned to Tony, meowing softly. He butted his head into Tony's hand, a request for contact. Tony sat cross-legged on the ground and allowed Cat to curl up in his lap. He could feel the small body shaking with adrenaline, heartbeat an all-too-familiar rushing pound against a heaving ribcage. He stroked Cat's fur gently until the shaking stopped, then carried him back into the bedroom where they both slept quietly until sunup, Cat pressed along Tony's side with his head on Tony's arm.


	2. Puzzles and Pawprints

Given that it would be a few more days until Pepper returned from New York, Tony settled into an easy pattern with his furry housemate. He'd wake up and share his coffee in the kitchen, reading the news on his Starkpad and keeping up with Pepper on the events of the shareholders' meeting. Once awake enough to work, he'd put on Hulu for Cat (now in season 2 of Scandal) and spend the day downstairs working.

Strange's magic battery was turning out to be a bigger pain in the ass than he'd initially expected. Rather than serving as a simple case, it appeared that the golden shell of the sphere contained some kind of puzzle or required a password to be opened. Jarvis had noted early that the energy readings coming from inside the sphere confirmed Strange's theory that it was indeed a battery, but given the question mark around the composition of exterior shell, there was no way to know how much energy was actually contained inside and how much the shell was serving as a dampener.

It had been more than a month since Natasha had first delivered it, and Nick Fury was starting to register his daily displeasure with Tony's lack of progress.

"JARVIS what am I not thinking of?" Tony asked miserably.

"Sir given that it is impossible for me to know your thoughts, it is therefore also impossible for me to determine what you are _not_ thinking."

Tony groaned. "Remind me again why I haven't invented a direct neural interface?"

"Sir, you have been figuratively 'banging your head' against this puzzle for 12 hours a day for the better part of the past three weeks," JARVIS chided gently. "Perhaps it would be helpful to productively distract yourself with other work?"

"Right, right. Maybe in a little bit. I think I need a sandwich."

"Very good sir."

Distracted and hungry, Tony didn't notice a dark shadow dart past him and into the lab as he closed the door. Once up the stairs, he assumed Cat was off in the bedroom sleeping or maybe sunning himself in the corner behind the couch. He was in the process of slathering mustard on a ham sandwich and thinking about the best ways to determine the chemical composition of the sphere's shell when JARVIS's voice interrupted: "Sir, I believe you may have accidentally allowed our resident feline into the lab."

"Shit shit shit!" Tony dropped the knife and flew down the stairs, mentally cataloging every dangerous tool, every terrible chemical, all the exposed electronics and live wires and _who even knew what DUM-E would do if Cat started fucking with stuff on the workbench._ Tony practically tore the door off the hinges and skidded into the lab, ready for the worst _and yet-_

There was Cat. Curled into a neat ball in Tony's chair as if awaiting his return. The sphere lay untouched on the bench, and not a single half-finished project was touched. Tony laughed his relief and stroked one hand down the soft fur between Cat's shoulders. "You gave me a scare, you wily fucker. What did you think you were doing, sneaking in here like that?" 

As if in reply, Cat stood, stretched, and nuzzled his hand.

"D'you think you could just stay like that? I mean, I'll allow you down here if you can keep from messing around with my stuff."

Cat turned in a circle and went back to napping in Tony's chair.  
____

Pepper came home on a Saturday. Tony found it a welcome distraction from his work, and was more than happy to help Pepper get her bags back into the bedroom.

"God I missed you," he said into her neck as he started pulling up her shirt.

"Oh, Tony, I hope it wasn't so terrible without me," she replied, stilling his hands and guiding him into long, slow kiss.

"It was better having Cat here, but it wasn't the same without you."

Hearing Pepper's voice from the living room, Cat appeared around the corner, meowing loudly.

"I think he wants to know where you've been all this week. He's probably behind on head scratches and How to Get Away With Murder."

Pepper crouched and scooped Cat into her arms. "And how are you doing this afternoon?" Cat settled in with his front paws draped over her shoulder and purred contentedly. "Aw, Tony, listen to him! I missed you too, hon."

"I've officially designated him my new lab assistant," Tony grinned. "DUM-E is jealous I think but I told him the next time I give him a body upgrade I'll make the AI unit detachable so he can sit in my lap too."

"You aren't worried about him getting into your equipment?" Pepper looked concerned, and started examining Cat's fur for burn marks.

Tony glared. "I'm careful, I promise! He just sleeps in my lap or in my chair when it's not occupied."

Pepper's brow softened. "As Stark Industries' CEO it's my duty to make sure the new lab assistant has the correct skillset and clearance level to be working around so many top-secret projects."

Cat jumped from her arms and onto the bed, looking up expectantly at both of them.  
"I think he wants us to join him for a cat nap, hm?" Tony sat down on the bed and pulled Pepper with him.

Pepper's resulting laugh turned into a yawn as she considered her options. She ruffled's Cat's fur. "You drive a hard bargain."

They fell asleep curled together, Pepper draped along Tony's side and Cat asleep on his stomach.

 

Tony woke hours later to Pepper kissing her way up his neck. The afternoon had turned to sunset, and the room glowed with the last of the evening light. "I'd like to finish what we started earlier, if you're interested," Pepper said softly in his ear.

Tony hummed his assent and gently lifted Cat off his stomach, taking him in his arms, and carrying him to the living room. "Sorry, bud. Need some humans-only time. Tony turned on the TV and went back to the bedroom, closing the door behind him. It was only a matter of minutes before the meowing started. "Are you serious right now?" Tony called through the door. The meowing turned into angry yowling and continued for a few more minutes, then ceased.

An hour later, Tony and Pepper stepped out of the shower, hazy and contented. "Want some dinner, Pep?" Tony asked as he headed into the bedroom. "I'll have JARVIS call for Thai."

"That would be perfect, Tony, thanks. We can just get the usual."

Once dressed, Tony left the bedroom to find Cat.

"JARV can you order us the usual from Cholada? Also, have you seen Cat?"

"Of course, sir. As for Cat, motion detection indicates that he is down in your lab, however DUM-E is reporting that he is acting strangely."

"Can you turn on the camera and send the feed to my Starkpad?"

"At once, sir."

Pepper came around the corner to see Tony sitting at the kitchen bar transfixed, staring at his Starkpad. She walked up behind him and rested her chin on his shoulder to see what he was looking at. JARVIS was feeding footage up from what was definitely Tony's lab.

Tony was stunned. There on the cement floor, Cat was batting around Strange's magic battery. Every few seconds, he would put all four paws on it to pull it back toward him, and it would _light up_ , white light tracing a delicate pattern in tendrils across its metallic surface.

"Isn't that-" Pepper started.

"Yes, oh god, and we have _no idea what it will do when it's opened_." Panicking, Tony flew downstairs yet again, only to find Cat sleeping curled in his chair. The sphere sat idly on the floor of the workshop next to one leg of the workbench, surface flawless once more.


	3. Hacking and Hammocks

"JARV what just happened?"

"It appears, sir, that, upon hearing you descend the stairs, our resident feline decided it would be better for him to be asleep than to be caught playing with a potentially alien magical artifact."

"But like, is that something cats do?" Tony said, just as Pepper got to the bottom of the stairs. "Just pretend like nothing happened?"

"My cursory review of the internet's vast library of cat videos would seem to confirm so, yes, though I admit this instance seems to be more ...calculated than most."

"He's okay though, right?" Pepper asked.

"All sensors indicate that Cat is functioning normally, "JARVIS reported.

"Well that's a relief." She picked him up and held him close. He leaned into her touch and started purring again. "He must have gotten bored waiting for us and started to play with it."

"Well he was definitely onto something. Pep, could you take Cat upstairs until the food gets here? I need to think some things through."

"Of course." She started up the stairs with Cat, admonishing him affectionately: "I don't want to give you the idea that you'll get a reward you when you make a mess in the lab, but you and I are both behind on How To Get Away With Murder and I can think of worse ways to kill the time."

Tony ran a hand through his hair, mind running through possible next steps. "JARV, save that footage to the Energizer Bunny project. Could be a password sequence activated by contact. We can replicate it and see what happens. Clearly it's not the only stage of the password, otherwise the sphere would have opened."

"Already done, sir."

Tony picked up the sphere and placed it back on the workbench. "Alright, can you display the footage on the main screen and project Cat's contact points on the sphere right here?"

"Of course sir; I am currently processing the footage." Seconds later, four bright blue pawprints were displayed on the sphere's golden surface. "As you know, this is only accurate with relation to the spacing between contact points. I have no way of determining the position."

"Guess we'll just have to see if the orientation matters." Tony muttered to himself as he lined up the fingers of one hand to the blue pawprints and pressed. Nothing.

"JARV, can you bring up the results from our experiments the second week? I remember both the magnetic field and gamma radiation readings showing enough of a pattern to determine an axis and a top and bottom, at least arbitrarily."

The diagrams appeared next to the footage of Cat happily rolling around on the floor with the sphere. An additional pair of red points appeared on the sphere. "According to our earlier tests and my current readings, these two points indicate, for lack of a better term, the poles."

"So do you think the pattern has some kind of specific relation to the poles?"

"Impossible to say, sir. The number of possible locations and orientations on the surface is nearly endless, even knowing the pattern itself."

Tony's eyes lit up. "Well it's a good thing you've got a lot of memory, JARV. I think we're going to be mounting a brute force attack on this puzzle. Can you start a schematics file? We'll need to build a testing rig to let you get your hands on this thing."

"Very good sir."

____

Tony had a passable first version of the rig drawn up by the time Pepper called down that the food had arrived.

The sphere would be suspended in a case made out of a soft polymer skin (something had to exist to test touch-screens, right?) that JARVIS could bring in contact with the sphere using a grid of probes arranged around the outside of the case. 

He hoped that whatever system the sphere used to register contact, that the skin would be a close enough approximation to activate it.

Upstairs at the table, Tony was practically glowing as he shoveled Pad See Ew into his mouth.

"I think I got it Pep. After almost four fucking weeks, it took Cat to give me the hint I needed. But man, we are totally on the right track now." He beamed at Cat, who was curled up on the third chair at the tall kitchen table. Cat flicked an ear backward. Tony fed him a chunk of shrimp from his plate.

Pepper watched them affectionately. "Thank god. JARVIS and I were starting to worry about you spending so much time down there."

"Aw, JARV, you were worried too?"

"Always, sir."

Pepper laughed and waved a forkful of glass noodles at him. "So what's next?"

"Well, we'll basically be doing a brute force attack on it, trying all the possible positions and orientations on the sphere until we get the one Cat used. Gotta order some of the parts and make the rest of them, build the rig, and then let JARVIS loose on it. My guess is it's a multi-stage password, so this might be the first round of several."

"By my estimates, any further rounds after the first may take a significant amount of time, given that we have no idea how many contact points comprise them, and assuming that the second stage bears any resemblance to the first." JARVIS added.

"How long do you think it will take?" Pepper asked.

"Possibly as long as two weeks, especially given the physical component of the hack." JARVIS replied.

Tony sighed. "Well, better send Fury a message so he knows we're at least getting _some_ where."

"At once, sir."

"I'm sure Fury can hang on another week or two." Pepper said decisively, pushing her chair back from the table. "Right now we need to do something to celebrate your progress and the end of my shareholders' meeting." She stood and kissed Tony on the top of his head.

Tony smiled up at her, all suggestion and heat. "I can think of a couple of things."

Pepper grinned back. "I can too, but I find those _particular things_ tend to be better when you wait, wouldn't you agree?"

Tony pouted, but recovered himself. "So what's it gonna be?"

"Hm." Pepper emptied her leftover glass noodles back into the delivery container on the counter before sticking it in the fridge. When she turned back to Tony, she was smiling. "Wine and relaxation on the balcony? You've more than earned it. Plus, when was the last time we took the hammock out?"

"Pepper that's a tall order right now. I don't know that my body remembers how to do relaxation"

Pepper rolled her eyes. "I can give you some R&D reports to read if you need something to occupy you."

Tony shook his head. "Hardly. JARVIS and I have a rig to design, isn't that right?"

"If you insist, sir."

"You know it. I'll grab the hammock up from downstairs."

Tony was up a minute later, a colorful bundle in hand. It was the Mexican hammock he and Pepper had gotten on their last trip to Merida, on the Yucatan coast. It was a favorite beach spot they shared, and Pepper was especially fond of the hammocks.

"I feel more relaxed already," Pepper sighed. "Do you think we should let Cat out with us?" 

Tony frowned, "I don't know; we never figured out how he got up there in the first place, so he could have some secret escape route planned after we've held him hostage here for the last month. What if he ran off?"

Pepper looked doubtfully at Cat, still laying on the kitchen chair and eyeing Tony's armful of hammock. Pepper's face lit up with a thought. "That's right; I almost forgot!" She disappeared into their bedroom and returned a few minutes later with a small, brightly wrapped package.

"Did you get me something in New York?"

"Not you," she said, crouching in front of the kitchen chair, "Cat. I got him a collar in Manhattan." 

Tony dropped the hammock on the couch and folded his arms, ready to see if Cat would tolerate Pepper putting a collar on him. Unsurprisingly, as soon as she lifted out the object in question (yellow with a silver tag), Cat stood up and started backing away, nearly falling backward off the chair.

"Oh, we're going to be like this, are we?" Pepper scolded. "Come on, it's not like you can't get out of it." She demonstrated the quick-release function on the collar. "I just don't want you getting lost without a way for someone to know that you're ours."

Cat stood at a standstill and Pepper's face softened. "It's only been a month but I can't stand the thought of losing you." She illustrated her point by putting the collar on the table and engaging Cat in some full-on head scratches, right below the ears. Once he'd relaxed, she let him sniff the collar once before quickly snapping it around his neck. Realizing he'd been betrayed, Cat jumped off the chair, shaking his fur out and stealing angry glares at her between preening.

"I'm not apologizing to you." Pepper said, turning to Tony, who was by that point seated on the couch watching the show, one eyebrow climbing steadily toward his hairline.

Pepper narrowed her eyes and Tony raised his hands in mock placation. "Don't worry Pep, I wouldn't dream of telling the board that their CEO regularly engages in conversations with her cat."

"God, you're both the worst. How did I get myself in this mess?" she swept an arm over the whole situation. "I thought we were going outside to relax?"

Tony laughed and wrapped her in his arms. "You should have said something earlier."

 

An argument or two about hammock placement later, Pepper and Tony were cuddled on the balcony in the warm California night. Cat purred happily on Pepper's stomach while they both watched How to Get Away With Murder on her tablet, the collar incident seemingly forgotten in the show's drama. Next to them, Tony was working with JARVIS, detailing out more exact specifications for the rig he'd drawn up earlier and finalizing part orders.

"I'm still pretty sure he's legitimately watching that with you," he said at one point. 

Pepper laughed. "Obviously we just happen to have a very smart cat. I doubt most people's pets are helping them solve seemingly impossible magical mysteries in their spare time."

Tony looked up from his tablet to meet Pepper's eyes. "You don't really think..." he couldn't bring himself to repeat her.

"No, no, of course not. We won't tell him though, right?" She stroked down the length of Cat's spine and addressed him. "You're clearly a genius."


End file.
